J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company and Warner Bros. Pictures are teaming for a film adaptation of Stephen King’s recent 2021 novel “Billy Summers”.
The project was announced almost a year ago exactly as a limited series but is now being retooled into a feature film. “The Last Samurai” co-writers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz are penning the script while Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way will produce.
The story follows Billy Summers, a 44-year old hitman near retirement who takes one last highly lucrative job to feather his nest.
That job? He embeds himself as an aspiring writer in a quiet town ahead of a planned assassination for a mob hitman before he goes to trial and rats out his employers.
In his spare time actually begins to write a novel about his life story, and soon things soon go awry when his regular client doesn’t pay, he finds out there’s a bounty on his life and he ends up on a cross-country journey with a woman he saved in an effort to rectify some wrongs tied to the hit.
Zwick was attached to helm most of the episodes of the show when it was planned as a series – whether he or Abrams will direct the film isn’t clear. No production schedule for the film effort has been released.
Source: THR